I've been reviewing books for over eight years and feel I've just finished one of the most important books I've ever read.

It's a book that should cause a paradigm shift in international politics and foreign policy because it turns a lot of conventional thinking on its head.

The book is Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, jointly authored by Erica Chenoweth, an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, and Maria J Stephan, a strategic planner with the US State Department.

Analysing 323 examples of resistance campaigns and rebellion from 1900 to 2006, Chenoweth and Stephan conclude non-violent campaigns have been twice as successful as violent campaigns in achieving their objectives.

They contend that this difference is down to non-violent campaigns being more likely to attract mass support, noting "the moral, physical, informational and commitment barriers are much lower for non-violent resistance than for violent insurgency."

This greater level of participation tends to lead to more tactical innovation, more loyalty shifts among the regime's supporters and raises the political, economic and social costs to the regime - all of which increase the overall chances of success.

Moreover, they find that non-violent resistance campaigns are more likely to lead to democratic forms of government than violent campaigns.

Chenoweth and Stephan's conclusions chime with Gene Sharp, the world's leading expert on non-violence, who told me that using violence to overthrow a dictatorship was foolish.

"If your enemy has massive capacity for violence - and modern governments today have massive capacity for violence - why deliberately choose to fight with your enemy's best weapons? They are guaranteed to win, almost certainly."

Like me, no doubt many people will be surprised by these findings.

But our ignorance isn't surprising when one considers just how dominant the conventional view of power and violence is.

Physical and military force is seen as the most powerful and effective action an individual, group or society can take, while non-violence is viewed as idealistic, passive and fearful of confrontation.

Non-violent resistance has been hidden from history. We can all rattle off the names and dates of famous battles in recent history, but how many of us know about how peaceful demonstrations overthrew the Guatemalan dictator General Ubico in 1944?

Or how mass protests overthrew Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986?

If Ben Affleck wasn't so US-centric Argo would have told the extraordinary story of how the Shah of Iran was deposed in 1979 by a campaign of civil resistance rather than focussing on staff from the US embassy that had supported the dictatorship.

Civil resistance is rarely taken seriously in the media. Even the most radical voices at the Guardian seem to be as quick as many others to support violence.

Writing about the looming war in Iraq in late 2002 George Monbiot quickly summarised one proposed diplomatic solution to the crisis before arguing: "If war turns out to be the only means of removing Saddam, then let us support a war whose sole and incontestable purpose is that and only that."

A decade later Comment is Free regular Richard Seymour dismissed the idea of non-violent resistance to the Syrian government and backed violent resistance as the most effective option.

"Ah, this is all well and good," the sceptic will say. "But how can non-violence possibly succeed against a repressive dictatorship?"

According to Chenoweth and Stephan, the evidence they have collected "rejects the claim that there are some types of states against which only violence will work."

Rather their results show "that when regimes crack down violently, reliance on a non-violent strategy increases the probability of campaign success."

The Iranian government overthrown in 1979 had the worst human rights record of any country in the world, according to Amnesty International in 1976.

Not harsh enough for you? How about East Timor, where Amnesty International reported Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people between their 1975 invasion and 1999 - approximately one-third of the total population of East Timor.

Despite this mass murder a largely non-violent mass movement eventually managed to eject the Indonesian forces, and declared independence in 2002.

Another tick in the "pro" column for non-violent resistance is the fact it generally leads to a much smaller death toll - on all sides of a conflict.

For example, the largely non-violent people power in Tunisia and Egypt overthrew their dictators with far less death and destruction than the violent - and externally supported - uprisings in Libya and Syria.

Of course non-violent resistance is not a magic wand and does not guarantee success.

However, the hard evidence shows it generally has the strategic edge over violent resistance.

With the debate over Western intervention in Syria rumbling on among liberal commentators, Chenoweth and Stephan's findings raise profound questions for those living under dictatorships and Western citizens considering how best to help those resisting oppression.

Ian Sinclair is the author of The March That Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003, published by Peace News Press. He tweets @IanJSinclair